


Whitefall

by MirrorMystic



Series: Among Eagles [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Action/Adventure, Developing Relationship, F/F, Gen, Multi, Pre-Relationship, Space Opera, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-25 16:26:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14981000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MirrorMystic/pseuds/MirrorMystic
Summary: Adrian Chase’s secrets have been laid bare, and his criminal empire is ready to fall. The Order’s war against the Dark Star Syndicate begins in earnest, with the crew of the Sparrow leading the charge. Their target: A weapons manufactory hidden in the blizzards of the wintry planet Whitefall- a facility known only as Site 17.They’ll discover more than they bargained for in those frozen wastes- about their enemy, and each other...





	Whitefall

**Author's Note:**

> We're back, baby! 
> 
> "Embers" was a bit of breather, but now the crew of Order asset Sparrow is fully back in action. I hope you all enjoy the read!

~*~  
  
“Let me be completely honest with you...”  
  
Kit cooed, her crimson eyes glinting in the firelight. She lazily drew her fingers in circles across the hardwood tabletop, her nails tracing the loops and whorls of the wood.  
  
“We’ve danced around each other for far too long,” Kit purred, her voice a sultry rasp. “But I can’t hold back anymore. You hear me? No more games. No more running.”  
  
Kit took a shuddering breath, gazing deeply into those beautiful, amber eyes.  
  
“I want you.”  
  
The woman standing above her squirmed and awkwardly cleared her throat. While Lily desperately stifled snickers beside her, Aabha fondly rolled her eyes, reached over, and plucked Kit’s menu out of her hands.  
  
“What she means is, she’ll have the steak,” Aabha grinned.  
  
“...O-Of course…” their waitress murmured, while Lily was facedown in her placemat, vibrating with laughter.. “...Um, and for you, miss…?”  
  
Aabha and Lily placed their orders- like normal people, without all the sexual tension- and their waitress vanished into the crowd, slipping away into the susurrus of voices and the clinking of mugs against varnished wooden tables.  
  
The tavern they’d chosen for lunch was like something out of a fairy tale- log walls, roaring fires, the comforting glow of hearth and home. All of Whitefall seemed like that, so far, with its snow-covered roofs and cottages glowing from within with warm light and warmer company. This whole picturesque planet was made to be on a postcard. That, or its cozy winter aesthetic was something deliberately cultivated and capitalized on by the Whitefall Planetary Tourism Board.  
  
Tourist trap or not, Kit was determined to enjoy herself here. After all, she’d been a member of Order asset Sparrow for a whole month now- she deserved some time off. (And a steak. Don’t forget the steak.)  
  
Kit raised her arms above her head and stretched, before slumping down in her chair with a satisfied sigh. Across the table, Aabha had her chin in her hands, fixing Kit with an odd expression. Kit shrugged.  
  
“What?”  
  
“How are you going to come in here and get the most expensive thing on the menu as soon as Lily offers to pay?” Aabha teased.  
  
“Um, excuse me,” Kit huffed, “did Lily say ‘I got you’, or did she say ‘I got you’?”  
  
“Relax,” Lily insisted. “It’s fine. After getting Lila and I off of Persephone, I owe you two much more than just a steak.”  
  
“Don’t say that,” Aabha giggled. “She could still get dessert.”  
  
“And clothes, after,” Kit chimed in. “Don’t forget clothes.”  
  
Lily rolled her eyes. “Those, you can buy yourself.”  
  
Kit grinned, and bumped an elbow against Lily’s. She glanced up at Aabha. “Yo, hey. I know I was really pushing Team Steak here, but now I feel kinda bad. You can’t eat beef, right?”  
  
“It’s quite alright,” Aabha chirped. “Please don’t hold back on my account. Also, here on Whitefall, chances are your steak’s actually going to be venison, not beef. ...Also, I can’t imagine you were planning on sharing.”  
  
Kit huffed, indignant. She looked to Lily for support.  
  
“Oh, _deer_ ,” Lily teased. Kit shoved her in the shoulder.  
  
“Think you’re funny, huh?” Kit asked. “Think you got jokes?”  
  
“Yeah, I got one sitting right here,” Lily grinned. Kit shoved her again.  
  
Lily shoved Kit back. Their eyes met for one dangerous moment. Then a slappy fight broke out between them, and they started roughhousing like a pair of kids.  
  
“No fighting,” Aabha chided.  
  
Lily and Kit reluctantly settled back in their seats, having been on the verge of chasing each other around the restaurant. They knocked their elbows against each other, stifling snickers and teasing threats. For a moment, it looked like they had settled down- until Kit smacked a hand onto Lily’s shoulder with a gasp and a light in her eyes that said their food was arriving.  
  
Kit watched, starry-eyed, as their waitress set her plate in front of her. She was practically bouncing in her seat.  
  
Lily leaned over, nudging Aabha with her boot.  
  
“Maybe someday she’ll look at you like that,” Lily teased.  
  
“Maybe,” Aabha beamed. “Although, hopefully, she won’t have a knife in her hands.”  
  
They laughed, together, in the firelight’s glow. For a few precious hours, the picturesque planet Whitefall was everything it was supposed to be- an idyllic, wintry paradise, a place that celebrates hearth and home. Warmth bloomed between the girls, and settled like embers in their hearts.  
  
Kit felt a twinge in her chest, and an ache in her jaw. She smiled- and wasn’t sure she’d ever _stopped_ smiling, ever since that strange, fateful day. A month ago, she was a lonely, homeless pickpocket prowling the streets of Hypnos. Now, she had friends- Lily, with whom she was constantly tempted to just drop everything and wrestle, and Aabha, someone so earnest and sweet and full of light that Kit couldn’t help but be drawn to her, like a moth to a flame.  
  
Aabha’s amber eyes glinted gold in the firelight. Aabha’s eyes, her smile, her laugh… everything about her just gave Kit the strangest feeling. A warmth in her cheeks. A tightness in her chest.  
  
Then again, 24 ounces of venison steak could _also_ do that to a person.  
  
The girls emerged from the restaurant and walked headfirst into a howling reminder that Whitefall was, indeed, a snow planet. The icy wind bit right through Kit’s coat. She jumped, and swore, and wiggled and flailed, all while Aabha and Lily stood there and watched her, stifling giggles.  
  
“Oh, fuck off! Like you two aren’t cold!” Kit hissed, her teeth chattering.  
  
Aabha smiled, sheepish. “Fire mage.”  
  
“Rainy planet,” Lily shrugged.  
  
“Desert planet!” Kit huffed. She hunched over and stuffed her hands in her coat pockets, pouting.  
  
Aabha rolled her eyes. “Come here…”  
  
Aabha looped an arm around Kit’s. Kit squeaked in surprise as Aabha pulled her close, nestling her in the crook of her arm. Kit soon found herself leaning against Aabha’s shoulder, letting out a content sigh. As they walked together down an avenue of quaint, snow-covered shops, the cold swiftly became the last thing on Kit’s mind- at least, until she saw Lily watching her and Aabha with a smug, knowing smile.  
  
“You know,” Kit muttered, “you’re lucky it’s so cold out, or else you’d never be able to get away with being this corny…”  
  
“‘Get away with it’?” Aabha tittered. “You make me sound like I’m up to no good…”  
  
“Yeah, well, what _are_ you up to…?” Kit teased.  
  
Aabha cooed, and squeezed Kit’s arm.  
  
They entered the village square, where they found Robyn sprawled across a park bench, her legs crossed, hands behind her head. She’d switched out her usual duster and wide-brimmed hat for a fluffy, fur-lined hooded coat. She sat up as they approached, giving them a wave.  
  
“Ladies,” Robyn grinned. “Enjoying the weather?”  
  
“Not really,” Kit said dryly.  
  
Robyn shrugged. “Enjoying anything else?”  
  
Kit’s eyes instinctively flicked up at Aabha beside her.  
  
“...Well, we did just have lunch,” Aabha laughed.  
  
“I like your coat,” Lily said.  
  
“Oh, yeah?” Robyn asked, lifting up a fluffy sleeve and squeezing a handful of fluff between her fingers. “I’m feeling it, too. If I had an action figure, I’d be Winter Robyn. Authentic nap-taking action.”  
  
“What a collectible,” Kit grinned.  
  
“Doing some shopping, Captain?” Aabha asked.  
  
“ _Yuna’s_ doing some shopping,” Robyn said. “She always has trouble finding stuff in her size. Blame human-centric storeowners, I guess. She was taking a tour of the square, seeing if she could get some stuff tailored. Me? I was taking a nap.”  
  
Robyn waved. The trio turned, and saw Yuna across the square, her arms laden with shopping bags. Dressed as she was in an elegant and utterly incongruous white sundress, she didn’t seem to be bothered by the cold, to Kit’s quiet chagrin.  
  
Yuna broke into a broad smile at the sight of them. She turned as she walked, waving back, before promptly bonking her horns against the top of a doorway. She grunted in confusion, before sheepishly ducking her head and stepping into another store.  
  
“She’s… _really_ tall,” Lily wondered.  
  
“I know,” Robyn grinned. “Means I have to get up on my tippy-toes to kiss her. Drives me nuts.”  
  
Robyn raised her arms above her head and stretched, before slumping back down, draping her arms lazily across the back of the bench.  
  
“So! You girls got any plans while we’re still here in scenic Larksnettle Village? You should enjoy the view while you can- you never know when the fun police are gonna come calling.”  
  
All their comms chirped at once, as if on cue. Robyn blinked, startled.  
  
“...Uh. I swear I didn’t plan that.”  
  
A flicker of disappointment passed over Aabha’s face. She reluctantly untangled her arm from Kit’s and clicked in her earpiece. Syl’s stern voice came on over the comm.  
  
_“Sparrow to all ashore, Sparrow to all ashore. Please report to the control room. Duty calls…”_  
  
~*~  
  
Whitefall was a planet with two very different reputations, based on when- and where- you go. Nearer the equator, Whitefall is known for its close-knit communities and wintry charm, for cottages tucked away in evergreen groves, alight with a warm hearth and the sounds of cherished company. Stray closer to the poles, however, and Whitefall becomes a menace- a frozen desert of glaciers drifting through the sea like a mosaic of cut glass. Out there, there’s nothing but gray skies and frozen ocean, for as far as the eye can see-  
  
-except for one remote facility, an island of chrome and gunmetal gray, hidden in the snowy expanse.  
  
_“That,”_ Lila said, _“is Site 17.”_  
  
Lila stood in the Sparrow’s control room, her luminous form pacing around the projection rising from the holoterminal’s central dais. She was flanked by two other hololithic women, both bearing Order crests- Lila’s interrogator, Agent Tabitha Crane, Order Intelligence, and Commander Cassandra Vega, Morgan and Syl’s direct superior. Both women radiated power and professionalism. Flanked by such a menacing escort, Lila felt young, and awkward, tugging at the cuffs of her blazer- but she caught Lily’s eyes across the room and managed a small smile.  
  
_“It’s a corporate black site,”_ Lila continued. _“A Syndicate facility hidden in Whitefall’s frozen ocean. Officially, it doesn’t exist.”_ _  
__  
_ “Must be some real shit if Adrian didn’t even try to hide it in plain sight,” Lily wondered. _  
_  
“And we just found a path right to it,” Robyn murmured. “In the flight computer of a Blood Pact cargo freighter on a shipping run.”  
  
“Trust a cult like the Blood Pact to not know the first thing about operational security,” Jaki mused.  
  
Lila reached into the projection- an aerial view of Whitefall’s frozen ocean, dotted with glaciers. She formed a square with her fingers, and swiped. The view zoomed into Site 17 itself- an artificial island in the frigid sea. Its uppermost levels were vast hangars and loading bays, facilitating the transfer of huge amounts of cargo. The actual production facilities were tucked away in the lower levels, which were obscured to orbital scans. Like its fellow glaciers, the vast majority of Site 17 lay hidden beneath the surface.  
  
_“Site 17 is a factory,”_ Lila explained, _“outfitting Syndicate forces across the sector.”_  
  
_“If this were an ordinary weapons factory, then its existence might be excused,”_ Agent Crane spoke up, pushing her glasses up on her nose. _“Chase Security Solutions would, naturally, have a need for weapons and armor, and there are ways to acquire licenses to produce military vehicles and security mechs through legal channels. But the secrecy of this facility, as well as Mr. Chase’s trade with the Blood Pact, is reason enough to draw our suspicion.”_  
  
“So you’re saying, we get to kick the door down?” Kit asked, a little too eagerly.  
  
Aabha smiled. “Well. We should knock first.”  
  
“ _I_ can make a doorknocker,” Vincent offered. “The, uh, you know. The kind that goes boom.”  
  
_If it comes to that_ , Shanti typed.  
  
_“It will,”_ Commander Vega declared. _“Thanks to the intel provided by Miss Chase, we now have a singular opportunity to dismantle the Dark Star Syndicate in this sector. I am hereby authorizing Order asset Sparrow’s strike against Site 17. Cut off the Syndicate’s supply of weapons, and find out just how deep this rabbit hole goes.”_ _  
_  
Shanti reached into the projection and zoomed into the upper levels, highlighting a number of heavy flak cannons in red.  
  
_The Sparrow won’t be able to get in close without getting chewed up by anti-air defenses_ , Shanti warned.  
  
“We can take the Remoras,” Morgan ventured. “Skim across the surface, under the range of their guns.”  
  
“Here’s our target,” Robyn said, reaching into the display. A room at the top of the facility highlighted itself in red. “The administrative offices overlooking the main hangar. Two teams, two Remoras. One team breaks into that office and finds us some shipping manifests. Find out who the Syndicate’s in bed with, who’s helping them make weapons, and who’s getting their hands on them. Everyone else, they’re on diversion duty. Kick the door in, and make some noise.”  
  
“I volunteer for door-kicking,” Lily said.  
  
_“Site 17’s primary defense has always been being kept secret and inaccessible,”_ Lila explained. _“That being said, this place was expensive. There are going to be Syndicate forces there to protect their investment. CSS mercenaries. Maybe even combat mechs.”_ _  
_  
_“There’s a shipment going out tonight,”_ Agent Crane offered. _“If there’s a time to strike, it’s then. Catch them off-guard, ground that shipment, get the data, and get out.”_ _  
__  
_ Lila nodded, somber. _“And give my dad’s men what they’ve got coming.”_ _  
__  
_ Lily met her eyes. “We will.”  
  
“I can start plotting us a course to the north pole,” Yuna said.  
  
“I can put together a little something to get us inside,” Vincent offered.  
  
“Do it, both of you,” Robyn ordered. “Everyone else, get rested and get ready. We deploy in six hours.”  
  
~*~  
  
The meeting dispersed, and the crew scurried off to their preparations. Lily lingered in the control room, hesitant to leave. Robyn saw the question in Lily’s eyes. She pressed a key on the holoterminal, minimizing the schematic map of Site 17, and shut the door on her way out.  
  
The console shone to life at Lily’s touch.  
  
_“Hey, you,”_ Lila said.  
  
“Hey you,” Lily smiled.  
  
Lily took a seat on the floor, her back against the wall, while Lila’s luminous hololithic form sat, weightless, beside her.  
  
_“Man, these holos…”_ Lila began, wondering. _“They sure are a step up from two mismatched chairs and a tarp roof, huh?”_ _  
__  
_ “Yep,” Lily grinned. “We’re moving up in the world.”  
  
_“It’s so real,”_ Lila said. _“No fuzzy visuals. No time-delay on audio. Aside from being, y’know, glowier than usual, it’s almost like you’re right here with me.”_  
  
Lila mimed leaning against Lily. Lily stifled a snort.  
  
“You’re, um. You’re clipping through my shoulder.”  
  
Lila chortled, sitting up straight. _“Okay. Maybe it’s not perfect.”_  
  
Lily smiled fondly. “How’ve you been, huh?”  
  
_“Well, you know,”_ Lila shrugged. _“Tearing apart Dad’s criminal empire, one interview at a time. You?”_ _  
_  
“Similar,” Lily said. “More hands-on. I’ve got a shotgun now, which is cool.”  
  
_“Oh, yeah? Well, I hope you think of me every time you use it.”_  
  
“Heh, sure,” Lily teased. “I’ll just think of you and your little twig arms, holding a shotgun.”  
  
_“I’m sorry I’m not an Amazon, like you!”_ Lila huffed. _“Come on, I’m serious. What if it was_ ** _me_** _busting down the doors to Syndicate facilities, going in guns blazing?”_  
  
“Hey, I’m doing it so you don’t have to,” Lily chided.  
  
_“I know…”_ Lila pouted. _“Be safe, okay? I’ll be cheering for you. Just picture it: you bust in there, guns blazing, looking like the biggest badass in the galaxy, and I’ll be in the stands, with my hands around my mouth, going ‘Yeah, Lily!_ ** _FUCK ‘EM UP_** _!’”_  
  
Lily broke into peals of snorting laughter, and Lila smiled and cracked up right along with her, laughing until her projected form flickered and shook.  
  
~*~  
  
Downstairs on the crew deck, Aabha was occupied with her own preparations for the upcoming mission- by putting the finishing touches on the sign she was sticking on her cabin door.  
  
“Done!” she announced proudly, surveying her work. The door to her cabin now read, in bright neon marker, ‘Aabha!’ Below that: ‘And Kit!’ And now, it was joined by a chipper ‘And Lily!’.  
  
Beside her, Kit tried her best not to laugh.  
  
“What?” Aabha demanded. “It’s important! Lily needs her own sign!”  
  
“I know, I know, but… man, our door just looks so happy to see us.”  
  
“Wouldn’t you be?” Aabha chirped. “There’s nothing wrong with a little enthusiasm…”  
  
There was a flicker of movement in the corner of Kit’s eyes. She turned around, digging her elbow into Aabha’s ribs.  
  
“Hey, look out. Here comes the fun police,” she teased.  
  
Aabha giggled. “Don’t _call_ them that…”  
  
“Hello, girls,” Syl said sternly, marching down the crew deck corridor with Morgan in tow. “Aabha? Morgan would like a word.”  
  
“Yes, ma’am,” Aabha said. She shared a glance with Kit, before scurrying away.  
  
“Kit,” Syl called. “Don’t wander off. If you’ll come with me down to the armory, I have a bit of a surprise for you.”  
  
“Oooh!”  
  
~*~  
  
“I’m sorry I couldn’t give you a little more privacy,” Syl tutted.  
  
“Please,” Kit scoffed, behind her. “When we first met, I was living on a cot in a church-run homeless shelter. I’m already lucky you’ve got your back turned.”  
  
“Aabha has been telling me about how you wanted some armor,” Syl began. “We haven’t had time to get you a proper set of your own, but I think this will do for now. It’s a synthskin exosuit, one meant to be worn layered under heavier ceramite plating, but I thought you might prefer staying nimble over the extra weight. And, so long as you don’t mind hand-me-downs…”  
  
“No, no, it’s great! Thank you!” Kit grinned. “I feel like a real spy.”  
  
Syl managed a small smile. “How does it fit?”  
  
“Well…”  
  
Syl turned, and saw Kit standing there, sheepish.  
  
“It’s a little long in the arms,” Kit admitted, tugging at the synthetic fabric. “And a little loose in the, uh. Chest.”  
  
Syl chuckled. “Here.”  
  
She pressed an activation stud on Kit’s collar. Kit squeaked, startled, before watching in wonder as segmented, armored scales on the suit’s surface rearranged themselves to align with the contours of her body, fitting her like a glove.  
  
Syl pulled open her armory locker and let Kit get a good look at herself in the floor-length mirror. Kit whistled, long and low.  
  
“Digging the cat burglar look,” Kit grinned. “But it’s still missing a little something…”  
  
Kit wandered over to her own locker and started rummaging. To Syl’s bemusement, she emerged moments later wearing her favorite black boots, her field jacket open over her bodysuit, and her checkered yellow scarf tied around her neck.  
  
She pulled out her newly-stolen heat blade in its sheath, stylishly strapped together with her trusty combat knife, and slung the paired sheaths over her shoulder. Kit stepped out and admired herself in the mirror, cocking a hand on her hip.  
  
“Damn, girl!” a voice called from the cheap seats.  
  
Kit looked up, and found Lily, draped over the cargo bay’s balcony rail. She beamed.  
  
“Check me out, Lily!” Kit called. “You jealous?”  
  
“Hell yeah! Looking sleek!” Lily called back, smirking. “It’s just too bad you don’t have an ass!”  
  
_“What?!”_  
  
~*~  
  
“What?!” Aabha squealed, caught on the fence between excitement and fear. “There- There has to be some kind of mistake…”  
  
“There’s no mistake,” Morgan said gently. “Aabha, Syl and I would like you to lead Strike Two.”  
  
Aabha tugged at her braid. “But… wouldn’t _you_ rather-”  
  
“We don’t know for sure what kind of opposition we’ll face, once we get inside,” Morgan said, raising a hand. “My barriers will be put to better use on the front lines rather than sneaking around back.”  
  
Aabha opened her mouth. Closed it again. “...How many of us will be doing the infiltration?”  
  
“Two of you,” Morgan said. “You, and Kit. You’ll be responsible for her, as well.”  
  
Aabha exhaled, long and low. She kept tugging at her braid.  
  
“I, um. I just don’t know if I, um…”  
  
“If you’re ready?” Morgan asked.  
  
Aabha nodded, mute.  
  
“May I show you something, Aabha?” Morgan asked.  
  
Again, Aabha nodded, tugging at her braid.  
  
Morgan stood, and shrugged off his midnight-blue robe. He sat back down and draped it across his lap, smoothing his fingers across the shimmering fabric. Constellations twinkled in the night sky, struck through with wisps of blue. He pointed to one of the patterns.  
  
“Do you know what constellation that is, Aabha?”  
  
Aabha leaned forward, frowning. “Hm. No.”  
  
“How about this one?”  
  
Aabha shook her head. “...No… wait, are these constellations supposed to be as seen from Earth, or…?”  
  
Morgan smiled. “They’re not constellations at all. None of them are.”  
  
He traced a pattern with his fingers, and conjured a little pane of solidified blue light above his hand.  
  
“They’re spell patterns. This one, to form a shield. This one, healing. This one, lightning. When I was still earning my badge back at the Academy on Providence, my friends got together to make a little ‘study guide’- a cheat sheet, if we’re being honest. I’ve kept it, and worn it, ever since. It’s saved my life- and other lives- more times than you’d care to know.”  
  
Morgan pulled his robe back on, before reaching up and tugging something out from under his collar.  
  
“My friends got me safely through my first posting, so have a little something from me,” Morgan said.  
  
Aabha took it- a little glass vial on an unmarked cord, simple, spare. She blinked, before slipping it on.  
  
“Think of it as a good luck charm,” Morgan said, “and a reminder: it’s not about _what_ you know. It’s about _who_ you know. It’s about your team. You led the assault on Chase Tower back on Persephone. You can lead this. You are ready for this responsibility. Because your team believes in you- as do Syl and I.”  
  
Aabha broke into a smile. “Thank you, Senior Telerian. I… I won’t let you down.”  
  
Morgan clapped a hand on Aabha’s shoulder, before rising to his feet. He stood up straight, and clicked his heels together.  
  
“Strike Two, prepare to deploy,” he called.  
  
Aabha saluted.  
  
“Yes, sir!”  
  
~*~  
  
The Sparrow’s engine room was awash with noise, as if the ship itself had a heart that shivered with anticipation for the upcoming mission. The very air trembled with noise: the rumbling roar of the Sparrow’s atmospheric engines, wholly distinct from the eerie warbling of the drive core as they shot through hyperspace; the rustling of Vincent rummaging through boxes full of parts and assembling the missiles that would break down Site 17’s front doors; the subsequent crashing and cursing as Vincent tripped over an errant wrench and sent assorted machine parts skittering across the deck; and the playful outrage of the argument just next door, as Lily and Kit were loudly debating whether or not Kit had an ass, and Syl insisted, in the name of professionalism, that she couldn’t take sides.  
  
Shanti, mercifully, couldn’t hear any of this.  
  
She sat in her little nook of the engine room, adjusting the weapon mountings of one of her many softball-sized hoverdrones. She gently eased open the armored shell, checking the focusing lenses, slotting in a pair of spare power cells.  
  
“Will you be joining them?”  
  
Her transcription drone flickered to life at her shoulder, and projected the words in glowing yellow holographic at eye level. Shanti glanced up towards the hatchway leading out into the cargo bay. She pulled on her gloves, and started to type.  
  
_Aren’t you?_ She asked.  
  
Jaki was leaning against the side of the hatchway, his arms folded across his chest. He came inside, stepping gingerly over boxes of tools and bins of parts, and took a seat on an upturned crate. Somehow, his stark white thobe remained immaculate, despite the copious amounts of engine grease.  
  
“I am out of my element against mere criminals,” Jaki admitted. “Ghosts, cultists, daemons, sure. But my talents are of little use against men and machines. Especially not when we have seen who the true Enemy is.”  
  
Shanti shrugged. She tapped her fingers against the insides of her gloves.  
  
_Captain says shoot, I shoot. Captain says shoot it some more, I bring in the drones._  
  
“Fair enough,” Jaki conceded. “But we don’t know for certain what we’ll find at this facility. You don’t oft take the field. Are you frightened?”  
  
Shanti bowed her head, stony-faced. She slowly folded a mounted laspistol back inside a drone’s armored shell, and socketed it into her backpack charging station alongside seven of its peers. Shanti crossed her arms and typed, a shadow flickering over her eyes.  
  
_Nothing frightens me after Corinth._  
  
~*~  
  
The Sparrow soared over Whitefall’s vast, snowy expanse. The snow-covered roofs and firelight’s glow of civilization swiftly fell away to rolling hills, evergreen forests, and finally, frozen ocean.  
  
Yuna reached above her head and stretched, slumping into her pilot’s chair with a content sigh. Astride the two pilot’s consoles, a metal partition housed a holoterminal, a smaller cousin of the main holoterminal in the control room. Projected within the bowl of light, the Sparrow was a blinking blue arrowhead tracing a dotted line across the stark white expanse, with Site 17 a shining red smear in the distance.  
  
Robyn emerged from her cabin and marched up the hall. She nodded once to Jaki, pensively studying the projected map of Site 17 in the control room, before stepping onto the bridge, sidling up behind Yuna in her pilot’s chair and stealing a kiss.  
  
“Someday, I’m going to spin around in this chair right as you try to do that, and wind up poking an eye out with my horns,” Yuna chided.  
  
“That’s what the glasses are for,” Robyn grinned. She stepped away, into the alcove leading to the secondary boarding hatch, and pulled her fluffy, fur-lined coat out of her locker.  
  
She pulled her twin laspistols off their racks and armed them. They powered up with a whine, a tiny green indicator light appearing on their grips, just above her thumbs. She spun them, and clicked them into her thigh holsters, before shrugging on her coat and pulling up her hood.  
  
“You look cozy,” Yuna cooed.  
  
“I’m sure you haven’t noticed, but it’s a little cold outside,” Robyn teased.  
  
Yuna smiled, glancing back at her console. “Thirty minutes to target. You should get down there.”  
  
“Prep the Remoras for launch,” Robyn said, crossing over to Yuna’s chair and stealing another kiss on her way out. “The ship is yours, sweetpea. I want it back in one piece.”  
  
“You come back to me, too,” Yuna cooed.  
  
Robyn grinned. She pulled on her gloves and marched down the hall, her boots echoing on the metal deck.  
  
“Thirty minutes!”  
  
~*~  
  
A red warning light washed over the cargo bay. Vincent made the final adjustments to his little ‘doorknocker’, and gave it a kiss for luck, leaving a dirty smudge across his lips. He rose from a crouch on the cargo bay balcony, and flipped a lever on the control console.  
  
With a pneumatic hiss, the twin Remora-class anti-gravity skimmers disengaged from their holding racks on the ceiling and eased their way down onto the cargo deck. They settled neatly into the pair of launch catapults built into the deck, locking into position along the magnetized rails like bullets chambered into a gun.  
  
The hatches of the two skimmers opened with a hiss of pressurized air, unfurling like flowers made of gleaming chrome. Yuna’s voice crackled over the intercom.  
  
_“Strike teams, board your craft and prepare for sequential launch.”_  
  
Shanti emerged from the engine room, loaded for bear. She had traded out her grimy engineering coveralls for faded, wheat-gold fatigues- surplus from Corinth Planetary Defense, doubtlessly a relic from the war- and a fur-lined bomber jacket. Eight armed combat drones sat in a charging rack built into her backpack/portable generator, and she hefted the long barrel of an anti-materiel rifle like a yoke across her shoulders.  
  
Lily whistled, impressed, not that Shanti could hear her.  
  
_“Twenty minutes to target,”_ Yuna called over the intercom.  
  
Aabha and the twins stood together, exchanging curt nods. Aabha took a deep breath and let it out slow. Then, together, almost as if they’d rehearsed it, the three of them activated their badges all at once.  
  
The cargo bay thrummed with energy, somehow colored and tinged with three unique essences of magic- Syl’s spring breeze, Morgan’s starry sky, and Aabha’s radiant fire. Light gathered around them, leaf green, midnight blue, shining saffron- and when the tri-colored teleport flare faded away, there they stood, ready for battle. Syl, in her leaf-green segmented armor with lily-white cape and coattails; Morgan, in his starry-robe and tasseled white cloak over a glossy black chestplate and greaves, his robe's wide sleeves tucked into gauntlets; and then there was Aabha, in her shimmering saffron lorica and vivid crimson sari draped over her shoulder, sunburst chakrams gleaming in her hands.  
  
“Man, that never gets old,” Kit grinned, bumping an elbow against Lily’s. “C’mon, they can henshin! Do _I_ get to henshin?”  
  
Lily fondly rolled her eyes. “Supers.”  
  
Shanti just smacked her rifle butt against the ‘No Teleporting In The Cargo Bay’ sign in silent indignation.  
  
There was a clank of boots on the metal walkway above. Robyn appeared on the balcony, blinking in surprise when everyone’s eyes were on her. She stopped, clearing her throat.  
  
“Well, uh… Alright, guys, I’m not big on speeches. How about we get out there, get this done, and get back in time for dinner, that sound good?”  
  
The crew chorused affirmatives, and Robyn grinned. She ushered them all into the waiting Remoras, taking their seats, pulling on harnesses. Morgan and Syl paused, glancing back at Aabha and Kit, waiting by their Remora. Syl’s expression was stern, unreadable.  
  
“They’ll be fine,” Morgan whispered. Syl simply hummed in response.  
  
Vincent flipped a lever on the control console, and the Sparrow’s cargo bay doors opened wide.  
  
“Y’all have fun, now!” he cried, his voice immediately lost to the roaring Arctic winds.  
  
Robyn strapped herself into the front seat of Strike One’s Remora, shaking out her fingers. She tapped a key on the console, and the armored hull plates slid shut around them, the interior coming alight with a holoscreen fed by exterior cameras. All the view of driving with the top down- without all the wind, or gunfire, for that matter.  
  
On the underside of the Remora’s sleek chrome exterior, the anti-gravity drive shuddered to life. A ring of electric blue light began to shine from the Remora’s undercarriage.  
  
Robyn’s comm chirped. Yuna’s voice rang in their ears.  
  
_“We’re making our final approach. Five minutes to target.”_  
  
“Strike One, ready to deploy,” Robyn announced. Above them, the indicator light in the cargo bay flashed green. “Launching.”  
  
Robyn hit the ignition- and held on for dear life.  
  
The Remora shot out of the cargo bay, the launch catapult and magrail beneath it hurling it across the ocean like an arrow loosed by a goddess of the hunt. They surged across Whitefall’s frigid expanse, closing in on Site 17 at considerable speed.  
  
Yuna watched them go from the bridge holoterminal, a little silver arrowhead outpacing the Sparrow itself and racing across the endless ice. Strike One had been in the air for all of two minutes, and it was already halfway there.  
  
_“Strike Two, ready to deploy,”_ Aabha reported from below. Yuna touched a key.  
  
“Launch.”  
  
_“Launching.”_  
  
Strike Two shot across the ice, wreathed in azure lightning. Aabha grit her teeth through the first second of extreme acceleration- before the inertial dampeners kicked in, and she let out a sigh of relief. She glanced over her shoulder, flashing Kit a smile.  
  
“You and me, Kit,” Aabha grinned. “You ready for this?”  
  
“I dunno,” Kit teased. “With _you_ behind the wheel...”  
  
“Don’t you start,” Aabha warned.  
  
“Man, a secret mafia base frozen into a glacier…” Kit shook her head fondly. “...You never take me anywhere nice.”  
  
“Just wait ‘til it heats up,” Aabha grinned, tapping at her display. “Three minutes.”  
  
~*~  
  
Robyn swallowed. Whether it was out of professionalism or sheer nerves, the interior of Strike One was utterly silent, save for the hum of the anti-grav halo and the muffled wailing of the wind whipping past. There was nothing wrong with a bit of peace and quiet, Robyn mused. Things were going to get very loud, very soon.  
  
On her console, the Primary Ingress Target was highlighted by a set of glowing red crosshairs. It was a simple enough choice: Site 17’s main hangar was the largest and most frequented, and if they had enough space to receive a bulk freighter, they’d certainly have enough space for them to kick the door in.  
  
An obvious target. An audacious target. But as Lila had told them, Site 17’s primary defense was its inaccessibility. It was hidden well, in Whitefall’s frozen wastes, far from the warm hearth of civilization. No one was finding them by accident. No one was just going to knock on the front door.  
  
Robyn glanced at the figure counting down on the corner of her screen. Thirty seconds to target.  
  
Robyn smiled.  
  
“Knock, knock.”  
  
Two missiles flew out of hidden ports in the Remora’s belly, arcing away on plumes of white smoke, just barely outpacing the Remora itself.  
  
At twenty seconds to target, they got their first visual of Site 17- a shadow, a blip in the distance..  
  
At fifteen seconds to target, Shanti signed _‘Who’s there?’_ with a wry smile, to a puzzled Lily who didn’t get the joke.  
  
At ten seconds to target, Site 17 was rapidly filling the horizon.  
  
At five seconds to target, Vincent’s twin ‘doorknockers’ punched into the huge doors of Site 17’s main hangar and ignited. At two seconds to target, Strike One emerged from the erupting fireball, to the waiting gaze of mindless cargo-lifting servitors and their bewildered Syndicate guards.  
  
At zero seconds to target, the shooting began.  
  
~*~  
  
“Strike One reports contact,” Kit said, folding her arms across her chest. She and Aabha were at the Secondary Ingress Point- an access hatch on the far side of the facility that, according to long-range scans, led to a series of maintenance and service tunnels. In theory, it would give them unrestricted access to the facility, without them running into anything much worse than a repair drone, so long as they were willing to do a bit of climbing. And lockpicking.  
  
Kit watched their skimmer zoom back the way they came, returning to the Sparrow on autopilot. They’d be on foot until they managed to link up with the others. While Kit stood watch, Aabha was crouching by the hatch, fiddling with a holographic access panel.  
  
Or she would be, if she wasn’t getting distracted.  
  
“What?” Kit wondered. Aabha glanced away, tugging at her braid.  
  
“...Nothing, sorry,” Aabha murmured, carefully clicking holographic tumblers into place. “You just… I mean, you look amazing.”  
  
“Sh-Shut up!” Kit protested. “Not like _you_ , I mean, I’m no knight in shining armor…”  
  
“Stop…” Aabha smiled, warm. Then sparks flew out of the access panel and she yanked her hands away with a curse.  
  
“What’s wrong?” Kit asked. “Too high-tech?”  
  
“No,” Aabha grumbled, shaking pins and needles from her fingers. “It’s a piece of crap. It’s ancient. You’d think, if you were already spending tons of credits to build a secret glacier base, you wouldn’t cut corners on its construction.”  
  
“Well, stand back, sister,” Kit preened. “I happen to know a thing or two about locks.”  
  
Kit cracked her knuckles, and took a look at the access panel. Almost immediately, the holographic diagram flickered and died. Kit huffed, indignant.  
  
“Okay. Well,” Kit said, drawing her heat blade. “Time for Plan B.”  
  
~*~  
  
Charles Fontaine, Underboss of the Dark Star Syndicate, was a man of simple pleasures. A nice, reclining office chair. Putting your feet up on the desk. Having a smoke while enjoying another leisurely day in the middle of nowhere.  
  
Most folks in the Syndicate thought of Site 17 as a punishment detail- a handy means of promoting somebody you don’t like to a position where they’ll be well out of your way. The young bucks in the Syndicate would loathe having to supervise an industrial installation on a snowy planet in the middle of a frozen ocean. Blood-hungry idiots, Fontaine thought.  
  
Go ahead! Let those hot blooded kids get posted to where the “real action” is. Let them kill themselves in police raids and turf wars with the Exchange, or the Blood Pact, or any of the dozens of two-bit gangs. He’ll be sitting pretty here in his nice, climate-controlled secret base, with no higher bosses breathing down his neck. He’d have a cigar, watch whatever bawdy skin flicks he can find on the extranet, and enjoy his so-called “punishment detail” in one of the most secure facilities the Syndicate could provide.  
  
A distant bang rumbled through the control room. Fontaine paid it little mind. He lazily reached over and added a new task to the maintenance drones’ queue: investigate possible machinery malfunction. He took another long, slow puff of his cigar.  
  
A junior enforcer burst into the control room. Fontaine grunted in mild annoyance.  
  
“What is it?” Fontaine sighed, glancing at the boy out of the corner of his eye. He hadn’t bothered to remember his name.  
  
“Boss...:” the boy swallowed hard. He was pale with fear. “We’re under attack, boss!”  
  
“Pirates!” Fontaine scoffed. “Let the anti-air batteries deal with them.”  
  
“Not pirates, boss!” the boy wailed, gesturing wildly to the bank of security monitors Fontaine could scarcely lift his head to look at. “Look! It’s…”  
  
Fontaine grumbled impatiently at the boy’s hysterics. Twitchy little kids, jumping at shadows and ruining a perfectly calm afternoon…  
  
Fontaine groaned and glanced up at the security cameras. The main cargo doors were ablaze, and a ferocious firefight had erupted in the main hangar. Fontaine sniffed, looking on with utter disinterest.  
  
“...Then handle it,” Fontaine muttered. “Honestly, what do we even pay you for…”  
  
Fontaine stopped short. A symbol caught the light- and caught in his mind’s eye like a fishhook, or a brand.  
  
A crescent, an orb, and three diamonds.  
  
Fontaine recoiled as if slapped, falling out of his chair. He slapped a meaty palm against the desk and pulled himself upright, his fingers flying across the console. The main hangar camera zoomed in on their attackers- and the badges pinned to their breasts.  
  
“The Order,” Fontaine breathed, aghast.  
  
~*~  
  
After a few moments of mayhem, the Syndicate forces were starting to find their feet. A handful of veteran CSS mercenaries in full battledress rallied the defense, a massed force of Syndicate gunmen and warbling security mechs converging on the breach in the hangar bay doors.  
  
Haloed in the flames, Shanti and the twins held the line.  
  
They were out in the open, with no cover to speak of- so they made their own. Shanti planted her backpack on the ground and activated it with a twitch of her fingers inside her gloves. It hummed to life as a shield pylon, projecting a dome of pale blue light within which the trio took shelter. Morgan stood, and conjured barriers of his own- rectangular panes of solidified light that locked together like a phalanx of magicked shields. They rippled as they took fire, hard rounds pinging off the barriers like hail on a tin roof, lasbolts diffusing against Shanti’s shield and fizzling out into harmless flashes of light.  
  
They drank in the assault, and they returned it in kind- Morgan sending azure lightning lancing across the hangar bay, frying mechanical foes, leaving Syndicate guards shivering and convulsing on the battered deck. Shanti’s drones took up firing positions, wedged into the corners of Morgan’s summoned phalanx, Syndicate forces reeling beneath a storm of acid yellow laser bolts. Shanti commanded her drones with the haptic interface implanted in her fingers and set on the inner surface of her gloves, able to relay commands with subtle twitches of her fingers. And with her drones covering her peripherals, and trusting the twins to cover her back, Shanti was free to pick her own targets safely and without interruption.  
  
Beside her, Syl’s form was flickering with emerald energy. She cast phantoms into the fray, sending mirror images of herself charging into Syndicate positions, drawing their fire, luring them into the open for Shanti to cut down. For the security mechs, who were unfazed by her illusions, Syl brought something special- a forked spear with a barrel built into the haft, which she braced against the edge of her shield as she took aim.  
  
A beam of brilliant emerald light soared down the length of the hangar bay. It sliced into an overhead crane hoist, cutting a cargo shuttle from its moorings. It crashed to the deck in a ball of fire and twisted metal.  
  
Syl adjusted her aim, and fired more scorching beams of emerald plasma into the rafters, cutting shuttles and moored gunships from their maintenance scaffolding, systematically grounding any potential aerial opposition. Another lance beam cut a gantry neatly in two. It fell, trailing smoke and globs of molten metal, and crushed a trio of security mechs into the deck below.  
  
Together, the trio made three people feel like three hundred. Shanti and the twins held the breach against everything the Syndicate threw at them, shining yellow, green, and blue.  
  
Syl fired a well-placed lance beam that detonated a hanging gunship’s fuel cells. It exploded, ruining the two ships docked beside it, and a fireteam of security mechs vanished beneath their burning wreckage.  
  
Syl allowed herself a moment of satisfaction. She felt something at her shoulder, turned, and saw Shanti’s transcriber drone.  
  
Shanti typed a message, as if adjusting her grip on her rifle.  
  
_Strike Two has made it inside_ , Shanti reported.  
  
Syl met Morgan’s eyes, and exhaled.  
  
“So far, so good…”  
  
While the trio defended the breach- and thus, their way out- across the hangar, Strike One’s Remora was zipping around the swollen bulk of the mass cargo freighter whose shipment they had interrupted on account of excessive gunfire. Lily was at the helm, the corkscrews of her hair flying in the wind, thrilled to be driving something a little more maneuverable than her brick of a car back on Persephone- while Robyn was standing upright, her legs braced between the seats, firing sticky charges onto seams and radiators on the freighter’s armored hull.  
  
“Yeah, they’re not getting outta here anytime soon…” Robyn grinned, ducking her head out of the racing wind. “You wanna do the honors, kid?”  
  
Lily looked up, and broke into a broad smile.  
  
“...You’re too good to me, captain,” Lily said with a wicked grin, taking the detonator from Robyn’s hands.  
  
~*~  
  
Fontaine stared in silent shock at the chaos unfolding in his hangar bay. Three operatives, haloed by the vast inferno of the hangar bay doors, fighting every CSS mercenary and security drone he had to a standstill.  
  
Three. Just three! Order Operatives, the one thing in the galaxy guaranteed to cut into profits, making a mockery of any efforts to fight them back...  
  
Fontaine shuddered, clutching the edges of his control console until his knuckles were white. He pulled out a handkerchief and mopped the sweat from his jowls with shaking fingers.  
  
“Boss!” the boy cried out beside him, cutting through his terrified stupor. “The lifter’s requesting permission to take off!”  
  
Fontaine yanked down the microphone from its overhead stand.  
  
“Take whatever you have loaded and lift off!” he barked. “Get that ship in the air!”  
  
~*~  
  
The hangar bay filled with the throaty roar of the freighter’s thrusters. The main hangar doors were ruined by Strike One’s breach. Unable to go forward, it was forced to go up- up towards the cantilevered sections of roof plating pulling away to allow for a vertical takeoff.  
  
Shanti felt the rush of heat from the freighter’s engines, felt the throbbing pressure in the air. She saw the lines of loading servitors, sliding in the last few pallets of cargo with a single minded determination, oblivious to the firefight that had erupted around them. She saw the freighter’s boarding ramp starting to close.  
  
Shanti shouldered her rifle and broke away from Morgan’s barricade. She leapt up the sides of a nearby gantry, buffeted by the heat wash of the ship taking off, hunting for a better angle. She nestled her rifle against her cheek, and sighted down her target, the picture of utter calm.  
  
With the gentlest of sighs, Shanti took her shot.  
  
A gleaming yellow bolt, like a ray of sunlight or the glow of a forge, streaked across the hangar bay. It passed just over the lip of the boarding ramp an instant before it closed, and struck a pallet of plasma charge packs sitting in the hold.  
  
A catastrophic explosion ripped the freighter apart from the inside, the blast only barely contained by its armored hull. It lurched, twenty meters off the ground, smoke billowing from fractured hull plating. An instant later, Robyn’s sticky charges detonated. Explosions rippled across the freighter’s flanks, and its thrusters flickered and roared, fighting to maintain altitude.  
  
Shanti took a running jump off her gantry and threw herself into Syl’s waiting arms. Syl pulled her down, shielding her with her body, as Morgan drew his barriers tight around them.  
  
The crippled freighter dropped like a stone. It crunched onto the deck with a horrendous squeal of tortured metal, amid a cloud of shrapnel and debris.  
  
Then a spark struck its ruptured fuel reserves, and the hangar went ablaze with light.  
  
~*~  
  
The thunderous explosion shook the entirety of Site 17, sending spiderweb fractures cascading through the surrounding ice shelf. The shockwave hurled Fontaine off his feet and slammed him onto his back. He clawed at the desk to pull himself back up. The explosion had blanked the security feeds. They fizzled with a haze of static.  
  
Fontaine ran his hands through his sweat-slicked hair, his body surging with impotent terror.  
  
“...this can’t be happening…” he snarled. “How?! How did they find us?!”  
  
Fontaine roared and smashed his fists into the console in frustration and despair. One of the feeds flickered back online, resolving itself from the static cloud. In the burning remains of the main hangar, he saw her- a girl in a dove-gray trenchcoat and corkscrew hair, grinning proudly at the destruction around her. A flash of recognition lit his eyes.  
  
“...Adrian’s girl…?” Fontaine went white with rage. “That _filthy_ ** _turncoat_** _!_ ”  
  
The junior beside him staggered to his feet, clutching a bloody temple. Fontaine whirled around, stabbing a pudgy finger towards him.  
  
“You! Boy!”  
  
He winced. “It’s… Cooper, boss.”  
  
“ _Like it matters!_ ” Fontaine bellowed. “Get to my shuttle and prep it for launch! _Now_ , you idiot!”  
  
The boy nodded and hastily fled the room. Fontaine turned, his fear settling into a grim resignation. He flipped up a series of switches on the main console. He grimaced, and started activating them, one by one.  
  
“The facility is lost,” Fontaine muttered scornfully. “But if The Order wants the Project so badly… then they can bloody well have it.”  
  
~*~  
  
Lily stood, gazing out over the shattered, burning ruin that was once Site 17’s main hangar. Her eyes were watering, and it wasn’t just from the smoke. After years of being chained to Adrian Chase and the Dark Star Syndicate… after who knew how many years of market days…  
  
Now, Adrian Chase’s ambitions were going up in smoke. This bonfire consuming the hangar space was just the first of many- the match that would set his empire ablaze. And even though The Order sanctioned this operation and sent their Agents to carry out the assault, it was Lila’s intel that got them here, and Lily’s hands that helped carry it out.  
  
Pride swelled in Lily’s chest. Briefly, she considered taking a pict of the destruction, and sending it to Lila. _You did this_ , she would say. _We did this._  
  
“Fuck,” Robyn blurted out, rising from the rubble. “That didn’t mess around.”  
  
Lily helped Robyn to her feet, dusting her off. “That’s why we wear seatbelts, captain.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah…” Robyn waved the thought away. She keyed in her earpiece. “Strike One, check in. Everybody in one piece?”  
  
_“We’re all still here,”_ Syl croaked over the comm, coughing out soot.  
  
_“Is everyone alright?”_ Yuna’s voice sounded, frantic, in their ears, distorted in the wake of the explosion.  
  
“We’re okay, Yuna,” Robyn said. She watched, bemused, as the Remora casually hovered out of the smoke and burning debris, rocking gently on its anti-gravity field, surprisingly unscathed. “...All of us, looks like. How does it look out there?”  
  
_“Syndicate forces are pulling out. They’re running.”_  
  
“We’ll let them,” Robyn said. She glanced up to the control room overlooking the hangar. “We’re almost done here.”  
  
~*~  
  
Aabha cracked open the lock to the main control room and Kit burst in, just in time to see Fontaine stepping into the elevator at the end of the room. Kit whipped out her sidearm and fired. Three shots spanked against the elevator doors as they slid closed, and Kit hissed out a curse.  
  
“Forget him,” Aabha said, striding inside and making for the central console. “We have what we came here for.”  
  
Aabha fished a data tile out of a pouch on her armor and slotted it into the console, beginning the transfer of Site 17’s files. As streams of data flew down the screen, something caught Aabha’s eyes. She frowned.  
  
“Strike One, this is Two. The facility’s self-destruct has been armed and I can’t countermand it. From the looks of it, we have maybe eight minutes before this place goes up.”  
  
_“How long will the data transfer take?”_ Robyn asked.  
  
“Just a minute or two,” Aabha said. “Don’t worry. We still have time.”  
  
~*~  
  
Several storeys below them, in the hangar bay’s vast, smoke-filled atrium, Strike One was packing up and getting ready to pull out. Robyn glanced at her pocket chron, and frowned. Four minutes had gone by.  
  
“Hey, Aabha? Clock’s ticking…”  
  
~*~  
  
“I know, I know…” Aabha muttered. She studied the streams of data cascading down the stream and into her data tile, taking every secret Site 17 had to offer. This should have been a victory. But Aabha was not smiling.  
  
“What were they doing here…?” Aabha wondered. “Kit. Kit, come look at this.”  
  
Kit sidled up over Aabha’s shoulder. “What?”  
  
“Look,” Aabha said, gesturing to a string of code. The nonsensical string of characters made Kit’s head spin. “Don’t you see it?”  
  
“No,” Kit said bluntly.  
  
“There’s a secondary registry here, embedded in the first,” Aabha explained, her brow furrowed in wonder. “The first is just your average arms dealer stuff. But the second… they were getting shipments from the Blood Pact. The Exchange, too. This was no ordinary weapons factory.”  
  
“We already knew that,” Kit shrugged. “We already knew this place was weird.”  
  
“Yeah, but we didn’t know how weird,” Aabha said.  
  
“Figure it out later,” Kit said gently. “Once we’re back on the Sparrow, and not somewhere that’s about to self-destruct, we’ll have plenty of time to figure it out. Or have the eggheads at Order Intelligence do it for us.”  
  
Aabha exhaled.  
  
“...Yeah. You’re right,” Aabha said, meeting Kit’s eyes in gratitude. She yanked her back in alarm. “Kit-!”  
  
~*~  
  
Robyn frowned, tapping her foot, and watching the seconds go by on her pocket chron. With two minutes to go, she sighed, reaching for her earpiece.  
  
_“Contact! Contact!”_ Aabha’s frantic voice screeched into their ears. Robyn snapped her gaze up to the control room, high above, and the lights flashing within.  
  
“Aabha! Kit!” Lily cried, shrugging off her harness. Syl took her by the shoulder and pushed her back down into her seat. She and Morgan were on their feet. They met Robyn’s eyes.  
  
“Get clear, Captain,” Morgan said. “We’ll be right behind you.”  
  
Robyn frowned. “You’d better.”  
  
Robyn reached up and keyed in her earpiece.  
  
“Yuna, I hope you’re ready for us. We’re coming to you.”  
  
The Remora’s hull plates slid closed. The anti-gravity halo surged with power and they hurtled back out through the breach. Morgan and Syl turned towards the control room, summoning their wings to their backs. They shot towards the control room like comets, leaving streaks of leaf green and midnight blue.  
  
~*~  
  
Kit hit the wall so hard she blacked out for a second. She came to in a daze, her vision swimming, wiping blood from her nose.  
  
It was a machine- or, Kit thought it was. A machine like a hooded figure, a faceless construct in bronze armor and shrouded in a cloak of dark fabric that shimmered strangely in the light, distorting its true form into a smoky, phantasmal cloud.  
  
It cried out, with a voice like scraping metal, and pounced. Kit flinched as Aabha dove in front of her, chakrams flashing in her hands. The phantom drove her back, step by step, Aabha gritting her teeth and parrying blows from a weapon she could scarcely see.  
  
A clash of metal, and one of Aabha’s chakrams skittered from her grasp.  
  
Kit drew her sidearm, braced her aim, and fired. The creature cried out in something akin to pain, her shots simply vanishing into the smoke cloud wreathing the creature like a cape.  
  
A gout of magicked fire slammed into the creature from the side and hurled it off its feet. It tumbled across the floor, smouldering, its cloak flickering for just a moment, revealing its unnervingly long, thin frame, etched in sigils that made Kit’s eyes water. It coiled its huge legs beneath it, and pounced.  
  
Aabha slapped the creature aside with her chakrams, letting it crash headfirst into the control console. Aabha cried out and led in with a flurry of strikes, fire magic surging through her chakrams and scoring glowing gouges in the beast’s armor.  
  
There was a chirp from the main console as the download finished. Kit yanked the data tile out of its socket and ran-  
  
A bronze hand closed around her ankle and hurled her into the wall. Kit cried out, smashing through the bank of security monitors. She landed in a heap, gasping with pain, covered in sparks and chipped glass.  
  
The phantom dove for her again, a faceless nightmare clad in bronze and wreathed in smoke.  
  
Aabha’s chakrams hooked around the beast’s arms. Following Aabha’s wordless commands, the twin ring blades caught the figure by the elbows and yanked, wrenching its arms behind its back. Aabha crunched her knee into the figure from behind and grabbed hold of her chakrams, wrestling it down onto the ground.  
  
“Go!” Aabha called.  
  
“What are you, crazy?!” Kit screeched.  
  
The figure fought in Aabha’s grasp and she snarled, slamming it facedown into the deck.  
  
“ _Go!_ ”  
  
Kit grit her teeth, and whirled around, drawing her sidearm and firing. Three shots crazed the observation window before Kit’s running dive smashed the rest of it through, and she rolled onto a maintenance catwalk just below.  
  
Kit couldn’t take a single step before turning right back around.  
  
She drew a magical wind around her and launched herself back up into the control room.  
  
“Kit!” Aabha gasped.  
  
The beast saw its opening. It smashed an elbow back into Aabha’s face, and threw her off its back.  
  
Aabha hit the wall with a crack, all the wind driven from her lungs.  
  
Then the creature formed a blade with its armored fingers, and rammed her through.  
  
Aabha didn’t scream. She couldn’t. She stood there, stunned, her eyes wide, watching in dread fascination as her own blood dripped from the phantom’s fingers.  
  
Then she fell, limp, in the creature’s hands.  
  
_“Aabha!”_  
  
Kit exploded forward on a plume of wind, shrieking in outrage. The creature disdainfully clamped a hand around Aabha’s throat and threw her into Kit’s arms.  
  
Kit grunted as Aabha slammed into her arms, her momentum carrying them both out the control room window. The gantry shivered precariously as they hit the deck in a crumpled heap. Kit sucked in a breath, her hand closing around the horrific wound in Aabha’s stomach.  
  
Then the creature slammed down onto the gantry, fixing her with its eyeless gaze.  
  
Kit was on her feet in an instant, crouching above Aabha’s prone form. She drew her heat blade in one hand, her dagger in the other, both hands still slick with Aabha’s blood.  
  
Kit seethed, fury in her eyes.  
  
“ _I’ll_ ** _kill_** _you if you touch her._ ”  
  
The creature wasn’t fazed by Kit’s threat. Once again, it curled its legs beneath it, and _pounced_ -  
  
It shrieked, falling short, its bladed fingers scraping uselessly against the gantry.  
  
Morgan traced another spell pattern, the stars shining in the darkness of his robe. He splayed his fingers, and webs of shining blue light shot out, coiling around the figure and binding it within a stasis field. It shuddered and rasped in that strange, metallic voice. But Morgan’s spell held strong.  
  
Syl’s boots hit the gantry deck before the trapped knight, standing before Kit and Aabha like a mother bear before her young. She thrust her forked spear into the figure’s bronze chestplate, emerald energy thrumming between the tines.  
  
Syl blasted a smouldering six inch hole through the figure’s torso, dripping molten metal and weeping smoke. The figure slumped forward, wailing in that metallic rasp. Syl caught it by the chin on the end of her forked spear, and obliterated its armored skull in a blaze of emerald light.  
  
Behind her, Kit lowered her blades, and let out a long, slow breath.  
  
~*~  
  
_“Sparrow, this is Syl. We have them.”_  
  
“Thank goodness…” Yuna breathed, a hand to her chest.  
  
_“Aabha’s hurt. Bad,”_ came Morgan’s haggard voice. _“Jaki, I need you down in the cargo bay the instant we arrive.”_  
  
“At once!” Jaki called. Yuna frowned, listening to his footsteps vanish down the hall. She consulted the holomap on the terminal beside her, tapping at her console.  
  
“Syl, we’re en route to you now. You’re less than a minute out.”  
  
A klaxon began blaring, and a red indicator light appeared on the holoterminal. Yuna’s eyes went wide. She jolted forward, urgently keying in the vox.  
  
“Syl! Syl, you have something on your tail!”  
  
~*~  
  
“What?”  
  
Syl gasped, glancing over her shoulder. In the distance, Site 17 was being torn apart by a series of massive internal explosions, intense enough to boil the ocean around them. But out of the expanding fireball, something was coming. It raced out of the exploding wreckage, trailing black smoke behind it in a long plume- a mass of smoke and shadow, frothing and bubbling, lit from within by a foul, toxic light.  
  
“It followed us?!” Kit cried out in alarm, her arms looped around Syl’s neck.  
  
“What is that thing?” Morgan murmured, fear mounting in his throat. He held Aabha’s unconscious form tighter to him, a shining palm clamped over the wound in her gut.  
  
Syl and Morgan exchanged glances. She looked ahead. The Sparrow was coming their way, the cargo bay open and ready to receive them. Syl shivered, holding Kit tight.  
  
“Almost home,” she whispered.  
  
Just ahead of them, Shanti and Vincent were crouched on the extended boarding ramp, rifles braced against their shoulders. The phantom weaved around their shots, bolts of electric blue and acid yellow scoring smouldering holes in Whitefall’s frozen sea.  
  
Jaki ran down into the cargo bay just as Robyn hit the controls for the boarding ramp. It began to slide closed… too slow, too slow…  
  
The twin Faeries flew into the cargo bay and rolled across the deck, Aabha and Kit sheltered in their arms. The phantom flew in at their heels, faceless, bodiless, filling the cargo bay with an inhuman roar and the crushing weight of its toxic presence.  
  
Jaki opened his hand, and struck his staff against the ground.  
  
The entity froze for a split-second, before getting blasted out of the hold, shrieking in that unholy language. Jaki staggered back and fell to the deck with a clatter, reeling with the feedback.  
  
The boarding ramp slid all the way closed and sealed itself with a pressurized hiss. Robyn shouted into her earpiece:  
  
“ _Yuna,_ ** _go_** _!_ ”  
  
Yuna threw a lever on the bridge. The Sparrow lits its drives, suffused with a golden glow, and vanished into hyperspace.  
  
The blowback from performing a jump while still in-atmosphere briefly set Whitefall’s frozen ocean ablaze, along with the shattered ruin of Site 17 and the smoking remnants of whatever entity had pursued them across the sea.  
  
Nature always wins in the end, however, and in less than a day, Site 17 was nothing more than a fused metal ruin frozen inside an iceberg, and Whitefall’s picture-perfect scenery was unblemished once more.  
  
~*~  
  
Aabha dreams.  
  
She walks a shadowed path, the sky shrouded, the stars veiled. She hears the beating of mighty wings. She feels the wind through the trees, parting the clouds. In that darkness, there are no scales, no hearts to be weighed, no great maw waiting to swallow her up if her heart is heavy. There is just the plaintive, violet twilight, and the watchful glint of distant stars.  
  
Aabha woke up. She reached above her head, stretched, and immediately regretted it, a sharp pang running through her stomach.  
  
“You shouldn’t be awake,” Syl said, behind her. She was finishing up Aabha’s braid, tying it off with a little saffron ribbon.  
  
“Well, sleeping’s getting kinda boring,” Aabha said lightly.  
  
"Somehow, you never stay down for long," Syl said, and shook her head.  
  
Aabha exhaled, folding her hands across her stomach.  
  
“...I’m sorry,” she began.  
  
“Don’t,” Syl said sharply. “Morgan’s already beside himself with worry.”  
  
“What happened down there wasn’t his fault,” Aabha said.  
  
“It wasn’t _yours_ , either,” Syl said.  
  
Aabha shrugged. She glanced out the infirmary window, watching the luminous azure ribbons of hyperspace drifting past.  
  
“Where are we going?” she asked.  
  
“The next mission,” Syl said. “Always the next mission.”  
  
Aabha smiled. “Figures.”  
  
Aabha sat up. The vial around her neck caught the light. Syl gasped.  
  
“Where did you get that?” Syl asked sharply.  
  
Aabha glanced down, grabbing at her slipping blanket with a squeal.  
  
“Wow! Okay! Yeah. Um. Those are my boobs.”  
  
“Not-” Syl huffed. Aabha giggled.  
  
“...It’s Morgan’s,” she explained. “He gave it to me. Said it was a good luck charm. Do you know what it is?”  
  
“Water,” Syl said. She pulled out a similar vial from under her neckline, though hers was filled with soil. “From our homeworld, Tir Tairngire.”  
  
“Where is that?” Aabha asked.  
  
“It isn’t,” Syl explained. “Not anymore. It fell to Malice a long time ago. But those who survived, and fled, carry a piece of it with them wherever they go. It’s a… cultural thing. For Fae, at least, home isn’t somewhere you go. It’s something you carry with you.”  
  
Aabha nodded, somber. Syl gently laid a hand on Aabha’s head, before standing up, and dusting herself off, back to business in an instant.  
  
“I’m glad you’re safe, Aabha,” Syl said. “Your parents would’ve killed me if Morgan and I had to send you home in a box.”  
  
“I _have_ a home,” Aabha said, reverent, like a prayer. Syl nodded.  
  
“Carry it close.”  
  
She stepped past Kit on her way out of the infirmary. Syl nodded, curtly, before stepping aside. Kit darted into the room before coming to a screeching halt at Aabha’s bedside.  
  
“Aabha-” she began, before hesitating, as if her words were outpacing her mouth. “Aabha, I-”  
  
For a second, Aabha thought Kit might dive into her arms. From the looks of it, Kit thought she might have done it, too. But Kit stopped, and took a breath, and slumped into a seat at Aabha’s bedside, blowing out a frazzled sigh.  
  
“Aabha,” Kit whispered. “I’m so sorry.”  
  
“Hey, come on,” Aabha smiled. “I’ve been through worse. Besides, that’s what the armor’s for. Careful- now that you’ve got your own, that kind of shit can happen to _you_ , too.”  
  
Kit laughed- and it felt wrong that Aabha could make her laugh, even in an infirmary bed.  
  
“What were you _thinking_?” Kit chided, bumping Aabha with her elbow. “Trying to get me to leave without you, trying to pull some hero shit…?”  
  
“Well, what about you?” Aabha asked. “Standing above me, staring down a daemon. That was… wow.”  
  
“Oh, you saw that…?” Kit wondered, embarrassed.  
  
“Well. I passed out pretty soon after, but, yeah,” Aabha said. “It, uh. It sure was something.”  
  
“Sorry,” Kit winced, not sure why she was apologizing. “I, uh… I don’t know what came over me. I just… you were hurt, and I was just so... angry, and- and suddenly, all I could see was _red_ …”  
  
“Well…”  
  
Aabha looked up and smiled, meeting Kit’s vivid crimson eyes.  
  
“...red _is_ my favorite color.”  
  
Kit wrenched her eyes away, blushing like mad, while Aabha’s bright laughter made her heart flutter in her chest. She swallowed hard, wringing her hands.  
  
“Hey. Listen. I wanted to ask you... “  
  
“Yes?” Aabha smiled, sweetly and a little too knowingly.  
  
Kit huffed, shaking her head. “You’re not going to make this easy for me, are you? Listen, Aabha… can I… do you want to-”  
  
Kit bit her lip, before heaving a sigh and staring at the floor.  
  
“...Do you want to get something to eat…?”  
  
Aabha giggled. “...Sure.”  
  
Aabha offered her arm, and Kit took it, helping ease her up out of bed. They were all set to limp their way to the kitchen- until Aabha’s blanket got caught on her nightstand and Kit squealed in surprise.  
  
“Hey! Whoa! _Hello_ , Aabha!”  
  
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Aabha cackled, sheepish. “Do you… do you know where they put my clothes…?”  
  
~*~  
  
In the Sparrow’s control room, Agent Tabitha Crane, Order Intelligence, paced above the holoterminal dais, her arms crossed, studying the picts and data streams arrayed around her.  
  
_“I’ve read the preliminary reports,”_ Crane said warily. She pushed her glasses up on her nose. _“Agents Telerian, Captain Weiss, Miss Chase. It would seem that congratulations are in order. The destruction of Site 17 and the recovery of its files are an explosive beginning to our campaign against the Dark Star Syndicate. Well done, all. But this… this_ ** _entity_** _that attacked you in the closing moments of the battle… this is troubling news. Did you have any knowledge of this, Miss Chase?”_ _  
_  
Lily blinked. She cleared her throat, folding her arms behind her back.  
  
“...N-No, ma’am. I wasn’t even aware of Site 17 before our run in with the derelict freighter.”  
  
Lily looked up, and met Lila’s luminous eyes.  
  
“Lila, did you…?”  
  
Lila hung her head, tugging at the cuffs of her blazer.  
  
_“No…”_ Lila murmured. _“No, I didn’t.”_  
  
Lila blew out an anxious sigh.  
  
_“...What exactly were they working on…?”_  
  
~*~


End file.
